Mostly WordPress plus some other random thoughts and musings …

Work-Around for Google Forms problem

It is no longer necessary to use this work-around, the WordPress Google Forms plugin now supports the new version of Google Forms. This post remains here are part of the development history of the plugin.

Thanks to a tip form Kevin Dillon, a work-around to the problem with new Google Forms has been identified! Legacy Google Forms are still available IF you start creating the form by opening a SpreadSheet first. Once the spreadsheet is open, select “Create a legacy Form” from the “Tools” menu. The form editor and published URL will be the same as those that had worked prior to the Google Forms update.

Hi Mike, for some reason since they made that update a few days ago, the new forms I create don’t take on my custom formatting from the plugin. I’m dropping in the URL part of the embed code just as before, and have also tried the live form URL (which actually seems to be the same) but no luck. Any ideas?

You may have to re-visit your custom CSS with the new forms. I had to do this with my Help and Support form. I didn’t look at the HTML too closely but it looks like the structure of the HTML that google is sending is slightly different so if you employed some very specific selectors, they may not work any more and you’ll have to redefine them.

It means that there isn’t any new information in the Google Spreadsheet where the form information is stored so it doesn’t appear that you completed the form correctly. It has three pages of questions.

If you play around with the Test Bed Form I use for testing WordPress Google Form you can see how a multi-page form should work. You can go back and forth and change your answers and they will be retained as you go back and forth between pages.

Google changed the format of the URL about six months ago. I don’t believe there is any way to get an old style URL (one which contains formkey) from a new form. You need to use the new URL format if you’ve defined a new form. I also recommend moving forms away from the complex “gform” shortcode syntax to the new Custom Post Type and “wpgform” syntax.

You need to be more explicit on what doesn’t work in order for me to help you. The plugin definitely supports the new version of forms as most of my forms and most of the help requests I get are using new forms. Did you use the correct URL? This is by far the most common problem I see. You need to use the URL provided by the “Share this Form” button. The URL usually ends with “/viewform”. Which short code are you using? If you are still using the orignal gform shortcode, you should switch to defining your forms with the Dashboard UI (Dashboard->Google Forms->Add New Google Form) in conjunction with the wpgform shortcode. The original shortcode, while still included in the plugin, is no longer recommended and hasn’t been for some time.

Nope. Create a Google Form within Google Docs and when you’re done, choose the button for “View Live Form”. The URL for the live form is the URL you want to use when setting up your form within WordPress.

I just read through the entire string of comments on this post again and I don’t see any reference to a Google IP address changing. There is a mention of the URL format changing and it is no longer an issue. If you create a Google Form now, the URL format Google generates will work with the plugin.

Good luck with your project. I don’t think the article you referenced is still valid because it is no longer possible to create forms using the process outlined there. That is why there is a note at the top of my post that states what my plugin now supports the current URLs for Google Forms. Your issue seems to have no bearing on WordPress at all, it appears you ended up here due to a link on an Arduino post.

hi there
just wondering if you could help me. I’ve created a google form and it’s working. the only problems in when some people click on the link to the page it only opens half the form. on most computers when you click the down arrow on the keyboard you can scroll down and submit the form. However on tablets there isn’t an option to do this. I was just wondering why this happens-or how can a person using a tablet see the rest of the form and submit it. thanks

This sounds like an issue with your WordPress theme running on a mobile device. That said, if you’d like me to look at it, let me know the page to look at. It you don’t want to post it here, use my Help and Support form.